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Monthly Archives: April 2014

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So, back to school…eeeyuurgh!
Still, at least I just had to deal with maths and didn’t end up stabbed to death by a pupil as the shock hideousness at one school in Leeds revealed on the news this evening. What sort of freak takes a knife to school and then kills a sixty-two year old teacher?
I’m guessing he didn’t like Spanish.
Never seems to be girls who stab people does it? A few bitch-slaps and that’s it, if at all.
Saying that, judging by the state of American girls with their hideously disgusting violations of any form of taste whatsoever as proved by their revolting chest and neck tattoos I can’t see it being long before they start taking on the role of Psychotic teacher-killers too.
I am horrified by the revolting rubbish these girls are wrecking their bodies with. Locks around their necks, faces inked under their chin, foul! I thought I was open-minded until this fairly recent fashion began to show up on Instagram and Tumblr but I’m obviously not because I find it gross and that thing with the two studs where dimples might be…what the fuck? Who could seriously thing that is in any way attractive?
I realise everyone has differing ideas of beauty but I don’t get it.
Tattoos all down lovely slim legs that definitely look better free of ‘art’.
I know for sure because an extremely sexy tattoo artist who has been building up ink has pictures of before and after and while only one leg is inked the before is seriously SO much better.
I don’t really see how you can improve a beautiful slim woman by adding anything, perhaps the odd tattoo here and there but just as with the male, when they’re smothered it just looks a bloody mess. And don’t ever forget that no matter how good modern ink is that black WILL turn green eventually. I’ve got a wrist-tattoo that’s only four years old and if I’d suspected for a moment it would fade so quickly (despite constant sun cream and moisturising) I would never have bothered. In fact I insist on colour and as little black as possible now for that very reason. Anything but black, you might as well use green because that’s what you end up with anyway and me being colourblind I’m not a fan of dark colours anyway.
Unless it’s Beyoncé’s bottom, of course.

So anyway, maths was bloody awful as usual.
Trigonometry. Why? What was going on in Pythagorus’ head? The man is a genius but why do I have to learn that shit? I’m going to write about a maths teacher who is abused and murdered to make up for it. The pain will continue for an inordinately long time to make up for the headaches. (no, really)

Managed to do a few paragraphs of editing. It’s going well, things are being ironed out, semi-colons are being removed from their wrongful place and utilised more judiciously. Metaphors are being tidied, language made more effortlessly readable.
If only people understood the amount of effort that goes into producing a quality book perhaps they might appreciate them more but it’s a commodity like anything else. People aren’t starving are they? it’s just a book. Nobody got killed in the process. Maybe that’s where I’m going wrong?

Murder is so popular: why?
Not so popular in real life and yet it sells more than any other genre.
I bet there’s some fucker already planning their first novel about a kid who stabs their teacher. The ass will probably make a mint too.

Life eh?
Hardly here a moment and the only value for many of us is to feature in some shitty crime thriller about the horrible way we left the planet.
Is that immortality?
I think I’d rather go without.

You should move way from your computer screen to increase the flow of ideas ~ The Times.
Wow; insightful! I mean, who knew?
Luckily I had a go at typing, tried uploading to iPad and working on that to keep mobile but guess what? A pad of paper is as mobile as it gets and when it comes to transcribing from pad to Mac you get chance to do your first cursory proofing. I’m finally ‘getting’ the stuff I read and dismissed when I first began this odyssey.
No, there is not an easy way.
No, there are NO shortcuts.
Yes you will rewrite, rewrite and probably still wish you’d rewritten again even when finally you give in and publish knowing it’s not perfect but…life is not perfect; art; music; nothing is perfect so, let go.
An attempt at the best you can produce is all that’s needed. A recognition of the process. A tribute to the others who are now considered where you would like to be is the best any of us can offer. I would love to have my work revered and discussed along with other quality authors. It seems highly unlikely but at least I’m attempting to fly without feathers rather than setting my sights low and not even pushing myself. Fuck it’s hard though.
Today I feel I may have got stuck with my same old characters, it’s so difficult to create distinct character traits. My humour is mine, I can’t make up someone else’s just as I can’t transplant personalities. I try to doctor the dialogue a little but I’m not so sure I’m succeeding.
Still, the book moved on a little. Wheels are turning, the plot needs to be more convoluted, hopefully will be more convoluted. I’m trying to compete with the likes of Asimov, Banks, Moorcock, not an easy crowd to hang with.
I have the imagination to compete with the best though.

Did a little bit more editing on the Lily Pond.
Finally realising my semi-colon fetish might be a little overwhelming. It’s getting the glance right and I don’t want them just in lists, it’s the bounce of the sentence a la Virginia Woolf that’s the difficult thing to achieve but I’m getting there, it’s coming; practice is key.
Losing the capitals on some of the words has been a good move too. This is what? the fifteenth version of this novel and only now am I finally getting to the point where I think this might be close to the last version.
Hope so because I’m sick of the thing but it’s not going on sale until it’s right. After so much work it has to be, plus so much of it is pertinent to (some of) the history of the family I think it deserves the extra time. I’d like the two remaining members to read and enjoy it for the idealised version it is and hopefully the rest of the kids will one day get to read it and get something from it also, even if it’s just the impression that we were all closer than we really were.
It’s a nice tribute to big brother Kevin at least. I’d like to pretend we really were like that once.
So; a good day; busy, not so much social media, bit of a walk, lots of writing. Fruitful I think mother would have termed it…I like that ~ fruitful.

Well it confirms what I already suspected.
I just checked amazons top 75 fantasy novels and ‘surprise’ I’m not in there despite that being the main genre in which I write but worse than that is the fact that if you’re not in there your work won’t get seen unless someone specifically searches for you. What are the chances of that?
Fucks sake, I can’t even get my brother or my so-called best friend to even check out the free bits on my webpage.
I’ve got His Own Downfall coming out in a few weeks, maybe but seriously, what is the fucking point? I’ve had reviews in the local paper four times, not one book sold! Amazon is awash with name authors let alone all the losers like me and then there’s the likes of Fern Fucking Britten getting a prime spot on Loose Women tomorrow almost guaranteeing the talentless fuck a free ride when she’s as much an author as I am a fucking tv presenter. Makes you sick doesn’t it? People with real talent get left behind while the likes of her and fucking pig-woman Dawn French get a leg-up from their mates in the industry, fucking lot of nepotistic assholes.

It does confirm to me that my instincts to back off and put a few books in the bank is the right one. Pointless releasing them to apathy, better to wait until I can get some decent feedback from people in the know.
I reckon three years at uni and I’ll be writing some proper novels with more confidence and hopefully less of a negative attitude.
Right now I feel like giving up entirely and getting a job driving a lorry or a bus. At least you know where you are with that. No expectations, no disappointments, no embarrassment as yet again I faced failure, and won it. Still, it’s good to know the haters were right…fuckers.

Well this one at least eh god-suckers?
It’s been quite good, did a few thousand words on the new/old novel which I hope is going to be an Iain Banks quality sci-fi love/saving the world-type adventure thing. It’s evolving as I write so that’s a good thing.
I don’t plan much, just a basic outline which I then usually either forget or go on to ignore most of as the story writes itself after a certain point. That’s what it’s all about isn’t it? Free thought, free reign.
I can write to a brief but why would you limit yourself?

Anyway I had a great nana nap on the stairs after the first thousand words. I love that when you can feel the wave coming closer, each sentence becoming more and more surreal as the light slips away until there is no option but to lay down and let it slide.
Watched a film, Fast Girls, about an English relay team winning gold but I think it was probably more about the pertness of coloured girls buttocks for me. Great story but nothing compared to the firmness of the girls bottoms…sorry. Is that sexist? I don’t even know if heterosexuals are allowed to admit to finding the opposite sex attractive any more. It’s bound to contravene some health and safety rule or the Geneva convention on the human rights of buttocks to go uncommented upon. Not to worry, one day they’ll all be running in burkhas, you’ll be happy then won’t you, fuckwits.

So, I watched the inbetweeners movie yet again and yet again it made me laugh in all the right places and yet I feel as if maybe I should have matured enough to not find such things amusing but, no, I’m still a childish, possibly sexist, homophobic dick who laughs at poo jokes, and?

Finally I managed a little bit of editing, proofing, and typing before moving onto my autobiography that gets very little attention usually although it’s up to 40,000 odd words now. It’s a comedy of errors.
People think you can just become this much of a loser but it’s taken me a lifetime of underachievement to reach this level of stupidity.
I started young so failure is now second nature to the point that I don’t really believe in success within the same parameters that most people do. Basically I’m willing to settle for far less if it means I never have to do a full time run of the mill job ever again. In fact I’m willing to never achieve anything so long as I don’t have to work at the coal face again. Not that I’ve ever faced a coalface but driving the taxi is as close as I ever want to get to rolling that rock up the mountain on a daily basis.
Fifteen years down the pan, went in young-ish, came out manic, old, wrinkled, and ruined. Can’t get that time back, the only benefit is I spent the last year writing and now that’s me, that’s all I want to do.
That’s all I’m going to do.

I enjoyed that little blast of inspiration tonight. It’s weeks since I last put anything down. We’re at 1988 but there will be a steady progression through the dormant years and the lost years of the taxi have no merit.
Got in a taxi November 1994, went to Spain in March, got back in October of same year, got out again May 2010; the end.
Still recovering some sense of myself but so much was lost, so much destroyed, so much self-belief just wrung out of me over the time. The last vestiges of my belief in women and relationships, the remnants of my sanity, fuck, what a shitty job. Still, at least, despite my antipathy toward the trade I will never, ever, have to face that again.

Anyway it’s irrelevant as I can’t ever see me releasing an autobiography, who would read it? The same people who don’t buy my books? The same people who wouldn’t help me with my charity? The same family and ‘friends’ who would rather bitch about each other’s football teams or post cleverer peoples naff philosophical quotes on Facebook as though reading it endows them with the wit and intellect of the originator, tragic!
No, this one is for my own amusement, much like my last few novels although Hache (proofreader) has convinced me that maybe I should release my last book, His Own Downfall…maybe, maybe not.
I’m still not convinced there’s a market for my writing so simply putting them on Amazon is roughly the equivalent of standing on a clifftop in a strong breeze and pissing into the updraft so you regain your effluent all over your face and hair rather than keeping it safe and tidy within your bladder. There’s only so many times you can do that before you learn to face the other way, or hold it in until a convenience is available.

Managed to engage with the new book a bit today.
It’s a slow process. I used to find the moment I woke I was in the mood but lately the spark is wavering again. The urge to give in, to give everything up for the peace of eternity wallows in the background as ever.
The easy way out? Really? The sensible alternative when your life is the endless round of failures that mine has consistently proved to be.
I mean, no amount of success could bring back the girls.
I can’t get those years back and the ability to sustain a relationship is way beyond me now so I reckon one day loneliness might creep into the equation although it hasn’t so far but people change with age don’t they?
Regrets, I’ve had a few but then again so many I could go on forever and never get bored of moaning about them.
Doesn’t have the same ring to it does it?

Anyway, the book is going to be fantastic IF I can control the urge to rush ahead but it’s the same with everything I write, daunting. It always feels like the thing is going to wriggle out of my hands and what could have been magnificent will become merely adequate due to lack of skill, vocabulary, dialogue la la la. I think my characters do all have the same basic skill patterns which is a definite lacking. Their sense of humour is tailored to my own which is not the general populaces idea of funny. When you think how many think Fools and Horses or Michael bloody Crawford are the epitome of humour it shows how far out of synch I am.
I’m going to try and give them distinct character traits this time and keep the piss-takey banter out of it. Been there, done that.
Brilliant in Mast of Peace but you can overdo it if everyone is basically the same character in every book and, so far, they have been; er, you to..ss..er.

Still, maybe my best work is ahead of me?
Maybe there’s a novel in there that will blow people’s minds?
It seems unlikely but I can see me sitting outside a cafe in the north of Mallorca, pad, pen, shades, coffee, croissants and the heat sizzling, a sautéed, shell-cooked gem, simmering inside my skull in a mixture of endorphins and coffee fumes. The heat, the ambience, the occasional bikini clad buttocks passing by, inciting the germ of an idea that will ensure I never have to endure another English winter.
That will be the inspiration, that IS the inspiration.
Maybe New Zealand? Anywhere that’s warm most of the time where I can write and play will do. It’s not that I can’t work here it’s just I don’t want to and once you’ve been away it’s always understood that elsewhere you’re REALLY living.
Here is an existence, a ghetto, a compromise.
Too old for compromises now; too late to go back, onward, upward, don’t look down, it’s a long way.

Three today, three!
Usually I’m fighting the Mc,d’s addiction. The cream egg mc’flurry is a particular problem so thankfully it’s only for a month but today I decided I was entitled to a treat despite having a white Magnum for breakfast (after all, it is Good Friday and I have been good)
I took a leisurely motorcycle ride, (lie number one) towards Chale area (South Isle of Wight) but the chine I wanted to go down is closed due to erosion! That’s what happens to clefts if they’re not scrupulously maintained, corrosion, erosion, implosion, devotion, probably a few other words ending in tion/sion too that I can’t be bothered to list.
Soooo, I ended up blasting down the military road like a psycho car-hater.
I am the reason bikers have a bad reputation but I don’t give a fuck what car twats think of something they’re scared of; pussios! I also don’t give a fuck what pussy ride-to-the-letter-of-the-law hi-viz wearing tosspot ‘Advanced Motorist’ bikers think either. If you’re wearing hi-viz you’re no biker.
That, my dears, is the whole ethos of biking that these fag pussios don’t get and will never be able to comprehend.
Do what you want.
Ride how you like.
Wear what the fuck you want.
Do NOT conform.
Do not behave in any way that might be considered mature.
Fuck the police.
Fuck conformity.
Fuck hi-viz.
Fuck helmet laws.
Fuck the speed limit.
Er…sorry, I’ve gone off subject a little here considering I was talking about ice cream but that’s what happens when you consider all the pussies who are,trying to force square pegs into round anuses, it’s just not going to fit… as the vicar said…..
En eeee waaaay, so I ended up getting 120 on the clock of my little bike.
I didn’t know it could do that! (She’s only a Honda CBR600)
Cool, made me laugh and scrunching up behind the screen reminded me how superb bikes are when you thrash them a little harder than they’re used to.
So, I ended up at Compton beach as usual. The bike just wants to go there as it’s a good blast up the mili’ rd and a really cool place to make sand pictures, sculptures, take photos, chill, whatever.
Today I immediately thought of ice cream. Unusual ’cause I’ve passed that ice cream van loads of times before and taken no notice whatsoever but today was a double cone and flakes day; sunshine; slightly cool breeze, tide too far in for sand-pictures so it was take a couple of photos, write a few lines of my latest book and gannet ice cream regardless of the bloated belly that needs to shift a few tubs of lard already. Really shouldn’t be eating the stuff but the voices in my head are too powerful. I do argue with them but they bully my little sensible voice while their big booming do-as-I-say-not-what-the-pussy-voice-thinks bellow rides roughshod over my conscience only for it to witter on endlessly after the fact: tee dee arse!
Anyway it’s done now. I can console myself with the knowledge that the double cone was amaaaazing and the second white Magnum was incredible. My reasonable-brain even considered that maybe if I ate one a day until the day I die, regardless of the amount of lard attached to my blubbery body, it would be a life lived well.
I do genuinely love veg and salad but some days the only thing that will do it is dairy, oh and motorbikes.
Don’t ever forget the motorbikes.

I was going to write a few chapters, do a bit of maths homework, maybe proofread a chapter or two of my long lost 1st novel The Lily Pond but did I?
I did not.
Instead I stared at the TV, ate too much, prevaricated, stared into space and drank another coffee then eventually managed to force myself out the door to scrub officiously at the aluminium on my motorbike that looks as if it’s never really been cleaned properly in years. I got a bit carried away but she looks a lot better now and besides when I came in covered in grime I had that obligatory man-smear of grease on my forehead. Satisfying; it made me feel butch and manly for the first time in ages.
Writing is great but typing always gives me a slight ooh, like I should cross my legs and hang my wrist even more limply than I already do when lost in the moment. It’s a crossover from playing guitar I think. That same aversion to anything that might trap or injure the fingers results in a decidedly limp, effeminate way of holding the hands. When I type my little fingers stick out as I only use middle fingers most of the time but why I can’t keep the rest of my fingers in check I don’t know, bizarre isn’t it? I’ve questioned myself a million times and I can confirm I have no interest in the penis at all but to watch me type, clean or operate any form of machinery you’d imagine I’m a sausage-mincer straight away.
Mind you I am a bit fey in my writing, love, emotions, all that.
I put it down to that evil whore taking my Naiomi away.
I’m fantasising about an ideal world, the belief that looks can make a difference to the fact that few, if any, relationships can stand the test of time whether there are kids involved or not.
(I mean, look at Chwis and Gwinnie!how is this possible? You might get the impression that she would enjoy a good seeing to but in reality she’s probably an I’d-prefer-a-nice-cup-of-cocoa-and-a-carrot-dipped-in-garlic-mayo’ type.)
If the veggie-lickers can’t make it what chance for the rest of us?
Naive? Probably but I like to think, actually I know, there IS such a thing as love at first sight and if both parties actually out some fucking effort in instead of allowing youth and looks to determine their poor choices there is every chance of remaining part of a family group so long as the evil female can keep her vagina under her skirt! (Yes I am bitter)

Anyway, it’s been fantastic lounging about and doing no worky work at all today.
I might write something tomorrow, might not, might just eat ice-cream and chocolate all day, and?
I always find I get a burst of productivity out of taking some time away from the pen anyway. It’s fun, not meant to be a jobby-job, they’re for adults.

I’m really trying to stop with Facebook but then I find myself flicking through it again and wondering what is up with me?
What? like you’re ever going to find anything of interest on there!
Saying that, there are a few people I enjoy chatting to but then there are also a hell of a lot of asses.
I don’t get this thing of canvassing likes. What the?
So someone presses the like button, what, exactly, do you get from that? Needy, yes I am but even I don’t crave attention that much.
It would be nice if every time I posted something I got some interesting responses and a bit of chat but people aren’t clever enough for that. They’ve all gone for the ‘like’ button rather than responding with an articulate reply because there are so few braincells shared amongst the population now.
It’s like the click and share thing.
Click on someone else’s quote, paste it onto your page as if you came up with the philosophise-ism yourself when the last time the kind of person who does that had an original thought was possibly…er…never?
If you have some thing worth saying you’re not going to need to copy other peoples ideas are you fucktool!
I disappoint myself by apparently being unable to break my habit.
I thought I was above such depravity?
It feels like self-abuse in public, ohhh, maybe that’s why? Maybe it’s the feeling of dirtying myself, soiling myself, shaming myself, that makes me do it again and again. Maybe I’ll go back on there after writing this, one last depraved moment before bed. Actually I am going back on to post a picture asking people not to ask me for ‘likes.’
I don’t, ahem, like it. Rofl, fnar, lol. God, I am so sorry.

When is a 15 tog quilt not tog enough?
When you lay down for one of those can’t-keep-my-eyes-open-a-minute-longer naps that wash over the, ahem, more-mature gentleman only to find yourself waking up cold and being aware of merely skimming the surface of sleep due to the increasing discomfort of the lack of a decent temperature. Fine in the middle of a cold snap but as we’re having an unseasonably mild April I find it a distinct inconvenience and it’s not the first time I’ve questioned the validity of the markings on the product. I mean, you pay out a bit extra for the proper feather guff (duck feather and down ac tu a ll eee) so you expect it to keep you snuggly but this thing is all but bloody useless when it’s cold cold.
Maybe my body just can’t manufacture heat like it used to?
It’s weird because I’d only just got back from a long walk; slight rise in heart rate; slight rise in temperature.
The idea is to get the metabolism metabolised right out but when it reduces me to a slumbering cotton-wool-headed incumbent of zed-land, snore avenue, snoozington. It’s not much bloody use to anyone is it?
Age…what is it good for?
snorin an a snoozin,
say it again
I said age…what is it good for?

So I started writing, as I do, but I got so far then thought ‘maybe I don’t remember this story as well as maybe I should before I go piling into it so I stopped and decided I should read back through the 27,000 words so far just to be sure I’ve got the jist. Lucky really cos it turns out I don’t but then, when I got bit further along this evening it turns out there are 100 quadrants as I’d thought, so…anyway, there are now 101 quadrants in space ranging out from Astaartaa into deep space, free space beyond the known, logged and charted. Still, there is a lot of detail in there that’s needs making notes on if I’m going to succeed in carrying it on with any aplomb.
Now is that a word that should be used more often or what? Aplomb, wicked. Aplomb, roll it on your tongue, a bit like meringue, or merengue, the dance, both of which need an amount of aplomb to achieve any skill at.

The story so far is amazing, who knew I’m such a sci-fi geek?
Actually I’m not so it’s as big a surprise to me as anyone else, not that anyone else is surprised because no-one takes a bit of notice of anything I do. No-one reads this, no-one reads my books and almost no-one bothers with my social media guff either.
Bovvad? Er…yep, a little.
Anyway, I’m conducting (oh yea, I’m the conductor, my Fbuk fwends the audience, yea right!) an experiment to see if anyone notices I’m not posting shit anymore. It’s frustrating because my photography is going through one it’s periodical high moments but what the Fffff, no-one gives a wa, gives a fu, gives a shhhh, the F’in C’s.
Anyway, could save myself a lot of time pissing about on Fbuk and the rest if I can go a week and nobody responds. I kind of hope they won’t cos then I can retain my general dislike for the human race with bells on.
I notice, much like everything else in life, that people post back to me IF I respond to them but the same people I chat to can’t be assed to respond to me.
There’s going to be a cull, no bats, no clubs, no blood, no baby seals, it will be a silent vigil, a slip into the dark, silent as a snake after the kill, a stalking, raging slink into the night, brooding, rejected but sated with the knowledge that the hermit survives while the socialite fails without the nurture of the spotlight…the f to the c to the muthafondlers